I was surprised that he did not show himself here, even indirectly, disguised as one of the politicians. Probably he was content to let me work out a peace agreement, and then rip it to shreds before it could be implemented. He enjoyed playing with the human race that way, toying with us, tempting us and then degrading us when we reached for greatness. Like flies to wanton boys, I thought. Except that this fly has no intention of allowing any god to pull its wings off. Not now that I’ve learned how to use them.
CHAPTER 32
It took weeks. Seven weeks, plus two days. A hundred times or more I thought my imposed peace conference would see a murder across the conference table. A thousand times the politicians blustered at one another, hurled accusations, threats, turned to me and blistered the air with their rage, promising to flay me alive once they got back to their own worlds.
Each time I told them that no one would leave this time and place until they had agreed upon peace, with a treaty that they all endorsed, a treaty that bound them all to stop the war. And I warned them that if they could not end the war, they would become casualties themselves.
A dozen times they came close, only to have the agreement shattered on some objection, some grievance, some seemingly impossible demand.
But slowly, grudgingly, they inched toward the agreement that I demanded. I used no force, except the threat of execution. That was enough to keep them at their work. I fed them and allowed them to refresh themselves from time to time. I allowed them to sleep when they needed to, although that caused some complications because the Skorpis preferred to sleep in the daytime and the Tsihn and humans at night. The Arachnoids did not seem to sleep at all. But always I brought them back to that conference table, like dragging a puppy to the paper it is supposed to use when you are training it.
After fifty-one days they had the agreement on paper. They were exhausted, all of them, by the effort. But where they had started, fifty-one days earlier, as enemies and strangers across the table, now they knew each other, perhaps even respected each other. Even the incommunicative Arachnoids had used the translating machines I gave them to make certain that their needs and desires were addressed in the treaty.
They were about to sign the document when I made the final objection.
“There is one problem that the human members of this conference have not addressed,” I said from the head of the long table.
“What is that?” they demanded.
“Your armies. Your soldiers. What do you intend to do with them?”
The humans on both sides of the table glanced at one another. “Why, put them back in cryonic storage, of course. What else can we do with them?”
“Let them live,” I said.
“They don’t know how to live! They’ve been bred for soldiering and that’s all they know.”
“Find worlds that are not occupied and let them settle on them. You owe them that much.”
“They won’t know how to survive. The skills of farming and building and living peacefully have never been part of their training.”
“Then train them,” I said firmly. “Train them as you fly them out to these new worlds.”
“They would die off in a single generation,” a gruff-faced man pointed out. “They’re all sterile; bred that way, you know.”
“They can make children through cloning, the way you made them. And their children needn’t be sterile.”
“But if we sent the troops off to other planets, that would disarm us,” one of the women objected. “We would have no army to protect us in case of future need.”
“Let your own children train for soldiering,” I said. “Defend yourselves.”
“That’s a ghastly idea! My children, soldiers?”
I leaned on the table with both hands. “Only when your own children are soldiers will you understand that war is not something you play at. These men and women have fought for you and you’ve rewarded them with nothing. No rights, no privileges, nothing in all their lives to look forward to except more fighting.”